Easter's been and gone; the seasonal reminder of new life and new beginnings whichever faith you practise. Spring seems to be racing ahead - catching me unaware as the early blossom of the cherry plums in the hedgerows fade, and I notice in my garden the promising green buds of the fruit trees I planted in 'Chicken World' have started to break into colour and display their wares for passing insects to pollinate them.

Brazen as you like they flash their sexual parts to passing hoverflies and bees, promising a bounty of pollen and nectar if only they will land and then transfer the pollen to another waiting flower. Allowing fertilisation to take place and embryonic fruits to form.

I planted a quincunx of fruit trees in with the chickens originally, hoping to add something that benefitted them in terms of shade, and me in terms of produce and helped make the 25 foot square enclosure look less like a farm-yard, and more like a garden. It's not easy, the chickens are ruthless in their scratching and not a single blade of grass or dandelion leave has survived since I introduced them. The trees thankfully are more robust, and having chosen dwarfing rooting stocks  I planted the five various tree in a cross pattern. There's a dwarf Cox apple, a couple of dessert cherries, and a couple of plums.  Against the trellis fences on the eastern side of the enclosure I have planted 4 double-U cordon trees that I have spent the past 10 years training in pots; they are so happy to at long last be in the ground and each tree (2 apples and 2 pears) cover a six-foot panel width ways and in height.

The tree planting didn't stop there! Oh no!  I them decided that on the western boundary I would plant a fruiting hedge. This saw me putting in a quince, a mirabelle, a couple of damsons, a Howgate Wonder cooking apple inspired by the lovely apples I had brought home from Elizabeth's garden the last time I stayed there,  and a dozen whips of blackthorn to help knit it all together and provide me with sloes for gin making later in the year.

It didn't stop there though, and I decided to experiment with single stem trees, also known as vertical cordons or minarettes.    These allow you to plant more densely; a foot apart works fine. So I added 4 Morello cherries and several different apples, either free-standing or strained against the side of the large bower that survived from the existing garden before the chickens came to live with me.  I suspect I shall have more fruit than I know what to do with in a year or two. Even the dwarf nectarines have blossomed generously and you can see the swelling fecundity behind each fading bloom as the infant fruit forms and starts to grow. 

Knowing that a near neighbour on the Pick Your Own fruit farm has bees who will help pollinate my trees as well as providing her bees brood with protein from the pollen and carbohydrates from the nectar really makes me feel good. The symbiotic nature of these relationships between animals and plants have evolved over the millennia, and I can only marvel at how they have evolved and adapted to one another's needs so that both come out well in the partnership.

Wouldn't it be marvellous if human kind could follow their example and cooperate rather than compete all the time? Can you imagine how much better the World would be if we shared and made the best of the resources available and each and every person could thrive?  I know humans are highly evolved, but often I am struck by the harmonious simplicity of nature and wonder if maybe we would have been better staying closer to our roots, than evolving into the destructive force we seem to have become?